Appropriate Technology News
John Barrie + Low Cost LED Light
The Ann Arbor News had a nice article about the Appropriate Technology Collaborative on Sunday, Dec 16th.
ATC is a new tech firm working on creating affordable technologies that solve problems for the 2.1 billion people who live on less than $2.00 per day.
From the Ann Arbor News:
Helpful inventors give away ideas
Architect spearheads nonprofit
John Barrie is interested in a different kind of client.
Oh, it’s not that the folks who’ve hired his Ann Arbor architecture firm haven’t been great – and let him pursue his passion for environmentally sound design.
But, well … there are people who are in a position to pay a whole lot less – in fact, nothing – and who need a whole lot more.
With his family’s blessing, Barrie is transitioning from his life as the principal at the firm that carries his name to full-time executive director of the nonprofit Appropriate Technology Collaborative.
When he talks about it, it’s easy to believe that this is a man who’s eager to get up each morning.
“We can reach 1 million people in five years,” Barrie says. “It’s absolutely realistic.”
Those people are the low-income residents of places in the developing world where there’s little or no electrical service, clean water or sanitation; where health suffers because vaccines spoil and the available fuels foul the air.
They are, in other words, people not served by appropriate technology.
Barrie and his cohorts have a plan to change that.
And it’s elegantly simple.
Working individually and cooperatively, designers, engineers and other like-minded, inventive souls can devise solutions to what are, in the end, technology problems. Let’s say lighting in a place where power is intermittent or nonexistent.
A solution deemed appropriate – that is economically feasible, environmentally sound and sustainable – is given away.
Right. It’s free.
“You can have the plan and make the device for yourself,” Barrie says. “You can use it to go into business and provide these technologies to your community.”
The drawing will be on the Web. “We’re just going to ask people to let us know they’re using them,” Barrie says.
More at the Ann Arbor News
Ann Arbor News article by Judy McGovern
Photo Credit: Lon Horwedel, The Ann Arbor News
Solar Refrigerator Wins Design Competition
Design Team + Refrigerator – Parabolic Trough Solar Collector
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (12.08.07)
Life Saving Vaccine Refrigerator Wins Design Competition
Vaccines must be kept cold to maintain their potency. Vaccinations in rural areas depend on time limited technologies such as ice, dry ice, and cold storage boxes. As a result, 50% of rural vaccines are wasted through spoilage due to lack of cooling. Public health suffers as a quarter of all children born every year–34 million infants–are not protected against diseases for which there are inexpensive vaccines and an estimated 2.1 million people around the world die every year of diseases preventable by common vaccines. (WHO 2005)
The goal of this joint design project was to design and fabricate an inexpensive appropriate technology freezing chamber that can be made primarily from locally available resources in rural Africa and
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative + MSU team won first place for the Edison Award which is judged to be the single most outstanding project. Executive Director John Barrie noted “We are very pleased to have had this chance to work with such a bright and energetic group of students, but the real winners are the children who will now get vaccines.”
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC) is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose purpose is “To design, develop, demonstrate and distribute appropriate technological solutions for meeting the basic human needs of low income people in the developing world. ATC works in collaboration with our clients to create technologies that are culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible and locally repairable in order to improve the quality of life, enhance safety, and reduce adverse impacts on their environment.”
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Photo Credit – Parabolic Trough – MIT Technology Review
Links:
John Barrie
Executive Director
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative
www.apptechdesign.org
Contact John Barrie
